Intuitive Eating- A series: Part 4: Principle 3- Make Peace with Food

“Intuitive Eating is an empowering act of self-connection”- from the Intuitive Eating for Everyday book. Welcome back to this series of blog posts on Intuitive Eating. In this series we take a look at each of the principles within the Intuitive Eating framework. You can catch up with Principle 1 here and Principle 2 here.

Today we are going to talk about Making Peace with Food. When I mention this topic I often get a quizzical look. What does that even mean? - this is the question that often goes with that look. Peace with food seems to go against much of what we are taught in diet/wellness culture. If you are at war with your body or food this is the principle for you.

To make peace with food you need to face your fears, address your food rules and land on unconditional permission to eat. Right now your brain might be saying…”Whoa…back up…unconditional permission to eat?? No, if I do that I will eat all the (insert feared food here)”. I have found that many people will put rules in place around eating- often these rules have been normalized by diet or wellness culture. When we start to put rules on foods and eating, we start to give power to the foods, or the ideas around these foods. For example let’s say you love potato chips so you try to “control” yourself around them. First you say “I can only have a few”, this leads you to not feeling satisfied when you eat them. So you want more. Then you think “Oh No! I can’t eat even a few chips because then I will want the whole bag!” So you avoid them. You might not buy any for the house, or maybe even avoid places that might have chips, like a social gathering or the movies. In doing this you have shifted the power to the potato chips, which are really just chips not whatever you have made them out to be. Systemic habituation can help you move past some of your food rules and just eat food. The idea behind habituation is to take the excitement/fear out of eating a certain food. If we go back to the chips idea, it is having chips available to you at all times and eating them whenever you want. Evelyn Tribole, co-author of Intuitive Eating has said to make this feared food available in abundance if you are able. I love salt rippled chips, so I would have many bags of this particular flavour available to eat whenever. I would also need to allow myself to eat them whenever the desire strikes. With my morning coffee? Sure. Before bed? Why not. The idea is to not put a rule or restriction on it. Once you spend some time allowing yourself to eat the feared food whenever you want you will find that your desire to eat it decreases. You might want the chips one day at lunch and not again for a couple days. You might find you eat 3 bags of chips each day for a week and then do not touch it again for 3 weeks. Often times I hear clients say “I can’t do that I will eat only chips for months!” But would you? When was the last time you ate only 1 food, exactly the same way for months. Yes this can totally happen out of necessity but does it out of choice? I often use the example of a trip to Las Vegas with my husbands family once. In Vegas we ate at buffets and fast food restaurants. After about 3 days I found myself saying “ I just want fruit, or a salad!” I love fries and burgers. I have always said I could eat them every day. But after some time of just fast food I was craving something different. You might have had a similar experience in your life. It isn’t that my body was “craving healthy food”. It was that I was sick of the same. We like variety as humans. Food is no different.

You might be thinking that eating chips (insert your feared food hear) every day is “unhealthy” however I would argue that having a negative relationship with food is unhealthy. Think about all the brain space you use up trying to avoid or control your eating around certain foods. What if that didn’t have to be. What if you could have all the foods you want available and eat them when you choose. Does that statement scare you? Excite you? Maybe take some time to see if you need to make peace with food.

This principle is a big one…I think there might be a part 2 coming next week.

Until next time be Unapologetically you while I be Unapologetically Me RD.